Well....Bob to be honest I feel bad for high jacking Joe's thread and airing my dirty laundry. It was a weak moment on my part.....
Back to Joe's original post....I do everything myself now a days with very little help. Long hours and for a while I have felt like I just want to sell all my stuff and maybe move to Colorado and work for a nice sign shop out there...or California. That's just pipe dreams though. GA is my home now.
QuickBooks, good point Joe, I am going to talk to my accountant and see what the extra fees would be for them to handle my books. I have QuickBooks online so I can give them access and in todays electronic age they probably could make quick work out of it and do it much better than me too.
Design, I have started to build a working relationship with a webdesign/computer repair shop a few stores down from me. They are young guys like me and hungry. The web design guy has talent. He has good design skills. I had a customer come in my shop yesterday afternoon talking about wraps......I told him the way I do wraps. The design is firmed out to the guys a few stores down, and I am the print, lam, install guy. We talked for about 45 minutes in my shop as I showed him my capabilities and also limitations, samples, pics. I gave him rough numbers based on sq/ft of his trailers and trucks he wants done. He didn't even flinch. He came from another shop in my town that are butchers and don't know what they are doing (my opinion). Their work looks like **** and some of the designs and wraps I have seen from them are way too busy and hard to read. Im not a designer but I know what is readable and what is not. Then we walked a few stores down and I introduced him to "the design team" so to speak. Well later that day I walked down and asked the guys how it went. They said great. They are putting a proposal together for him for not just the wrap designs but he also asked them to price doing him a professional website. I plan to give this potential customer a follow up call tomorrow afternoon just to touch base with him. We will see, you know how these things go, so he may just be price shopping.
Part time help, yeah I guess I need to find someone steady to work maybe 10-15 hrs a week. I don't need anyone highly skilled or nothing. Like you say Joe, just a willingness to work and learn. Most I what I would have this person do is so easy a caveman could do it....haha but seriously its just a lot of boring laminating, trimming, cutting.
To do list is key also. I used to be organized, but for the last few years I run my shop like a pig pen. Well that needs to change. Not only is it unproductive to be always looking for tape measure or pencil or knife. It is not the image I want potential new customers to see.
Dave